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Can Software Be Safe? An Ada Viewpoint
by Richard Riehle
Is one language better suited to safety-critical applications than another? The author makes a case for Ada as the best language when human safety is at risk.

Influence Value Defuzzification Method
by Dinu Madau
Defuzzification is compute intensive and may seriously bog down your system. Here is a computationally efficient method that reduces the resources required and eliminates the need for a faster microcontroller or custom logic.

How to Develop Programming Conventions
by Jean J. Labrosse
The subject of coding conventions can be touchy. Anyone trying to impose a set of conventions is likely to offend somebody. But because everyone working on a project needs to row in the same direction, this article offers a couple of oars.

Memory Protection in Embedded Systems
by Dan Hildebrand
A number of 32-bit processors available for embedded systems development are equipped with MMUs. Here's how to use memory management to survive software faults.

Special Report: Device Programmers–What's My Line?
by Nicholas Cravotta
As your design evolves, you will use new devices–the fear is whether your programmer will still be useful in a few years.

COLUMNS + DEPARTMENTS

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Buy a Chip, Get a Board
by Lindsey Vereen
Why reinvent a wheel that requires all sorts of expensive design tools if a compliant vendor will give you the plans for that wheel? This strategy is especially friendly to software engineers.

Real TIme
Access to Tools
by Tyler Sperry
My column had obviously been sabotaged by space aliens who realized how close I was to unveiling their plans.

Programmer's Toolbox
Carry Me Back
by Jack W. Crenshaw
In these days of 32-bit processors and 80-bit floating point numbers, the carry bit almost seems to be an anachronism.

Spectra
Try Not Processing a Signal
by Don Morgan
We might use a hammer to elicit the natural frequency of an anvil, but we sure couldn't use it for a feather.

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Break Points
Design for Performance
by Jack G. Ganssle
Clearly the chip vendors have an interest in solving performance problems by tossing in more CPU horsepower.

State of the Art
Heap Management
P.J. Plauger
All too often, programmers of embedded systems find themselves writing their own heap management functions.